Friday, April 1, 2011

Rebecca Black Leads Us Through 'Friday,' Frame By Frame

When Rebecca Black's "Friday" became the definitive viral hit of 2011, most people were drawn into the song's rapid-fire, slightly silly stream-of-consciousness lyrics. But the accompanying video — which so far has netted nearly 70 million views on YouTube — was a big part of the draw too, as it created a spectacularly colorful dream world that let Black play a bit.

But like any music video project (especially one that began so modestly), there were plenty of road blocks along the way. When Black sat down with MTV News to lead us through "Friday" frame by frame, she revealed that plenty of shifts had to be made. For example, in the scene where Black is at the bus stop, there was actually supposed to be a bus in the shot. "There wasn't enough money, so we got a car instead," she explained.

There is actually a lot of car-related action in "Friday" (which makes sense, considering the key lyric in the song finds Black wondering which seat in the vehicle she wants), and many of those scenes were actually the toughest to film. According to the singer, the sequence that finds her getting picked up at the bus stop was "scary" because the car was actually in motion, and the scene where Black and her friends are "driving down the highway" took quite a bit of time to execute. "We did that probably 50 times," she said. "It took probably over an hour to film just that part."

But if there was one thing that Black wanted to clear up, it's a scene that has become somewhat notorious. At one point, one of the male extras at the party scene walks up behind her and appears to give her a "butt slap." "People think he was slapping my butt, but he was patting me on the back!"